What is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and CEO of Morning Brew, coming to you with the last Founders Journal of the Week. For those of you joining for the first time, The Founders Journal is My Daily Diary,

made for you the listener where I go behind the scenes at Morning Brew and talk about

the biggest wins, losses, and challenges in running a business as a first-time

founder.

Today we're talking about the two must-haves of any manager

as well as the importance of being able to have hard conversations.

Let's hop into it.

All right, should we read out your post from earlier today?

Use that as a lot of that?

We should.

Okay, so four hours ago, I posted on LinkedIn two must-haves, must-haves in all caps, really wanted to add emphasis of every manager.

One, be excellent at having hard conversations.

Two, actually give a shit about your direct report and their development.

And I think it's really important both of these are included because actually

before the show we were discussing the topic and what I told you was I was like I want to talk

about the importance of having hard conversations because 99% of the time having a hard

conversation is the right conversation to have and you end up feeling way more or experiencing way more long-term

pain if you don't have short-term hard conversations.

And what was your response to me when I said that?

What do you mean by hard conversations?

And why did you ask it in that way?

A lot of our friends at different companies and bigger, more traditional, more competitive

...